1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a structured polarizer (linear polarizing filter) and a method for making the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A method is known from DE 195 23 257 A1 for producing a defined permanent change of the extinction spectrum of a dielectric materials containing metal particles by intense laser pulses, which method can be used to produce structured polarizers.
The method is based on silver-containing glasses which are irradiated with a femtosecond laser, whereby the thereby produced formed silver particles, which are responsible for the polarization, are oriented according to the polarization direction of the laser beam.
This method can be used to produce juxtaposed regions with different polarization directions, however, due to the lack of suitable lasers only for very small structures. The achievable optical densities, i.e., the degrees of polarization, are also limited. The proposed method is not capable to produce regions with complete extinction or complete transparency.